


Subterranean Homesick Wolf

by stormproofmatchgirl



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek has Nightmares, Derek's Life Is Hard, Evil Scientists - Freeform, Feelings, Government Experimentation, Hugging, Hurt Derek, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Multiple, POV Outsider, PTSD Derek, Protective Stiles, Rescue Mission, Stiles Takes Care Of Derek, Work In Progress, but it gets better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-17 17:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2317679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormproofmatchgirl/pseuds/stormproofmatchgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <br/>
  <i>It was while watching—hell, participating—in this process that Karen realized she was praying for the creature’s survival. Every time. And every time it recovered, she breathed a silent sigh of relief that was partly for DH006, but also for her own slowly corroding soul. As if its ability to heal itself might somehow absolve her.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Yeah, right.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>--</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Stiles had always been cursed with terrible timing. And so it had made perfect sense to him that on the night he and Malia split up, the night he drank a half a fifth of Old Turkey—or was it Wild Crow?—and stumbled to Derek’s apartment to confess his feelings for him, that Derek wasn’t home. And as it turned out, had disappeared completely. Again.</i></p><p> </p><p> (Heads up: The first chapter is outsider POV. Then it rotates between Stiles and Derek.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Possible trigger warning for this chapter: Graphic description of a medical procedure.)

If you would have told Karen Feldstein, the Cornell zoology undergrad, that in 15 years she’d be working in a secret underground compound for the Department of Homeland Security, she probably would have called you a fascist pig and told you to talk to the hand. She used to be totally street like that. But shit happens. Shit like unplanned pregnancies, rejected grant applications, douche-bag boyfriends who don’t pay their rent, and twins. Fucking _twins_. Oh, and let’s not forget the ubiquitous student loan debt collectors.

Who knows, maybe the DHS was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Or maybe it was just fate. But it was 11pm on a Tuesday, Amber and Sage were crying their brains out, the electricity had just been cut off, and Karen was trying to finish the fourth draft of her doctoral dissertation on the genetic ancestry of the Southeastern Red Wolf. By candlelight. With a migraine. How was she supposed to say no to the Assistant to the Secretary of Defence when he knocked on her door offering her a six figure salary? When he made a phone call and the power came back five minutes later? She wasn’t Gandhi for pete’s sake.

Not that she didn’t have regrets. But here she found herself, in her boss’s generously appointed subterranean lab facility, performing yet another set of tests on their very first living specimen: DH006. And just as she had for the past 8 days previous, she kept telling herself that this thing lying clamped down to the exam table, electrodes taped to its remarkably human—remarkably handsome—chest and forehead, was a monster, a mutant, and most definitely not an innocent being. And when she couldn’t bring herself to buy that line of bullshit, she simply stopped thinking about it at all, and left it for her subconscious mind to work out in the inevitable stream of nightmares she’d have that night.

Supposedly, the goal was to figure out what exactly happened in the creature’s brain as it transformed, and what DNA sequence allowed for such a thing to happen in the first place. She and the other assistants to Dr. Fleming had been placated with the notion of finding a “cure” of some sort, that might allow them to block the signals that cause the transformation, and essentially render it harmless and—for all intents and purposes—human. But Karen couldn’t imagine why they thought she’d actually continue to believe that, after everything she’d been a party to. 

It had started with simple observations; heart rate, pulse, brain activity. They provoked it into transforming with simple psychological stimuli and recorded the results, which seemed reasonable. But that wasn’t enough for Fleming and the DHS guys. Oh, no. They wanted to stimulate the transformation themselves. And soon, any bozo could parse out that they were more interested in how to control these things than how to cure them. For all Karen knew, they were having wet dreams about creating massive shapeshifter armies to send to the Middle East. Or, you know, Missouri. Anyways, they were definitely interested in testing its limits. They wanted reports on its capacity for rapid healing that involved inflicting progressively serious injuries. A small laceration on its left arm turned into a shattered tibia, turned into a punctured lung, turned into a room pumped full of tear gas. 

It was while watching—hell, participating—in this process that Karen realized she was praying for the creature’s survival. Every time. And every time it recovered, she breathed a silent sigh of relief that was partly for DH006, but also for her own slowly corroding soul. As if its ability to heal itself might somehow absolve her. 

Yeah, right.

On day nine, she was assigned the envious task of removing the creature’s feeding tube and IV so they could test its resilience to dehydration and starvation. Which she could totally handle. She didn’t have anything to be afraid of. At this point, the thing was so resigned to its fate that it had given up struggling against the titanium clamps around its ankles, wrists and neck. It didn’t snap or growl at them whenever they came near it anymore, it sort of just stared off into space like someone with a bad case of insomnia. A great sense of unease descended upon her as she approached him regardless. Like she could feel a storm coming in, though she couldn’t say from where.

When they’d first brought him in, his complexion had been a ruddy olive, but now it seemed milky and translucent under the harsh neon lights, only a shade darker than the white sheet folded over his waist. The wounds they’d inflicted had left no trace of scars on his body, but Karen’s memory had no difficulty conjuring them as she glanced over his limbs and torso. 

For a moment, she flashed back to her childhood, to an ICU in Greenville, Alabama where her grandmother had died. She’d been 13 years old, and had insisted on visiting her even though her Dad had intended to go alone. It was the first time Karen had seen someone hooked up to so many machines like that. She’d been terrified, but determined. Somewhere under all those tubes and wires was Grandma Jean—who made the best banana cream pie and swore like a sailor—and Karen was going to find her.

36-year-old Karen shook her head. Tubes and wires aside, this was completely different. Like it or not, she had mouths to feed and a job to do. She decided to remove the IV first. She started by pinching it off about half way between the creature’s arm and the bag of fluid, and for a millisecond, he broke his catatonic gaze and made eye contact. Karen pretended not to notice. She focused on the task, wrapping her fingers around his wrist with one hand, pulling the tape off where it held the IV in position with the other. His skin was soft and surprisingly warm and she could feel his pulse against her thumb. 

She pulled the IV catheter out in one quick motion and watched as the small puncture wound disappeared. DH006’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but he kept his gaze on the ceiling. She wondered what he was thinking about, if he was conserving a secret volcano of rage and violence, or if he actually felt as defeated as he looked. Considering how close her hands were about to be to his teeth, she guiltily hoped for the latter. 

The NG tube went up the nostril, down through the nasal cavity and the esophagus, and into the stomach. It was a long-ass bastard. Of course, the only time Karen had ever dealt with one was on a sick Coyote, but even then, she’d needed two other people to hold the animal down as she’d pulled the thing out. The only way this was going to go smoothly was if she got some cooperation. That meant talking. And eye contact. Yep. That storm was feeling closer by the second.

“I’m going to remove this feeding tube,” she said, as if for a hard-of hearing foreign exchange student. “Do you understand?”

DH006 blinked slowly, and for a second Karen was scared that his eyes might be that terrifying incandescent blue when they opened again. But they remained the odd shade of greyish-green that reminded her of the Scottish Highlands, and his brow furrowed a little as if he were confused for some reason. 

Wait. She was referring to him as a… _him_? How long had that been going on?

She had to get this over with. She had to get out of here. Go have lunch in the break room with Marshfield and Stanislovski and talk about last night’s episode of The Walking Dead.

God. How the hell had she ended up here?

“I’m gonna count to three and then I need you to hold your breath, okay?”

He looked at her. He looked right at her. And he nodded. Christ, he looked terrified. Which made no goddamn sense at all considering he hadn’t looked even remotely scared when Fleming had sliced his abdomen open without any anaesthetic. She nodded back and gently eased her fingers under the tube, brushing against his upper lip. She counted to three. He closed his eyes. She pulled. 

There was a lot of coughing and a lot of gross, slimy fluid that came out along with the tubing. But it was over. Karen tossed the tube in the trash, grabbed a couple of clean towels from over the sink and wiped off her hands. DH006 was relaxing a little, clearing his throat more than coughing now, and Karen wiped the strands of fluid off his face and chest. 

“You okay?” she asked, clearly not thinking.

DH shivered. “Is it over?” he asked, with a voice as ragged as an old dollar bill. And she knew he wasn’t talking about the NG tube. In his eyes, she saw hope.

Karen suddenly felt sick. The dirty towels fell from her hands and she backed away from the exam table slowly. Of course. Of course he saw what was happening here and thought that they were done with him, closing up shop. Whatever. He might not have even expected to get out alive. Maybe all he was hoping for was an end to his suffering. But the truth was, it was only the beginning of a new form of suffering. And Karen was letting it happen. No, she was making it happen.

“I’m sorry…” she said, barely a whisper.

DH’s fingers flexed outward, in a completely futile attempt to reach for her as she distanced herself from him. “Please…” he begged—for the very first time.

There had never been, and there never would be, a moment in Karen’s life where she despised herself more than she did in this moment right here.

She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her face with her hands, trying to get a handle on the panic she felt rising in her chest. “I… I don’t know what to do,” she said, feeling as though it was the most honest thing she’d said in days.

“Pen,” DH grunted, and the word was so small, the notion so simple, that it took Karen a minute to comprehend it. 

“A pen? Yeah. Yes. Of course.” She stumbled to the counter by the sink, where a cheap bic pen sat strung to the side of a clipboard no one was using. She cut the string viciously with her teeth, brought it over to DH and helped position it in his right hand. And she offered up her own hand to write on.


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles had always been cursed with terrible timing. And so it had made perfect sense to him that on the night he and Malia split up, the night he drank a half a fifth of Old Turkey—or was it Wild Crow?—and stumbled to Derek’s apartment to confess his feelings for him, that Derek wasn’t home. And as it turned out, had disappeared completely. Again.

Scott had managed to get in touch with Chris Argent, who assured them that he’d tracked Kate to somewhere in Bolivia, so it was highly unlikely she’d been the one to take him. But other than that, they had nothing to go on. No trace of a struggle, no cryptic messages left behind. And nothing to indicate Derek had any intention of leaving, either. There was a basket of folded laundry that still needed putting away, a ripe avocado on the kitchen counter. A fresh t-bone in the fridge, and a Bret Easton Ellis paperback splayed open on the coffee table as if Derek had only put it down to go take a piss or pour himself a cup of coffee. It didn’t bode well.

Sleep had been hard to come by, what with thinking about the various horrible things that might have happened to him. The worst thing about it was how quickly they’d hit a dead end. Even the Sheriff’s department had come up with zilch. Both Stiles and Scott hated feeling so useless, and they both struggled to concentrate in class, on the field—hell, Stiles could barely sit through lunch without zoning out a few times. He hadn’t told anyone about what he’d been doing at Derek’s that night. No one had ever really asked, anyways. But the longer Derek was gone, the stronger Stiles’ need to tell someone got. It was like this intense itch that he was going insane trying not to scratch. And his willpower was slowly dwindling. 

So when Lydia, in an act of desperate concern, dragged him to her house after school, ten days after Derek had gone missing, he finally broke. 

Lydia was weirdly unfazed by his confession. “Huh. I guess it makes sense then,” she said, and bit off the end of a baby carrot. 

Stiles lifted his weary head from her kitchen table and gripped the edge of it with his hands. “What? Why? What makes sense? Some part of me having feelings for Derek makes sense to you? If it does, please enlighten me, because I’m kind of at a loss here, Lydia. I’ll take anything. Really.”

Lydia let out a sympathetic hiss. “Sorry. I meant it makes sense that you’ve been so worried about him. I mean… even more than Scott. I was actually wondering about that.”

Wow. He hadn’t realized he was that obvious. Or maybe Lydia was just incredibly observant. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat, feeling his cheeks warm up. “Yeah. I just— I need to be doing something, you know?” He shifted in his seat, drummed his fingers on the table, and felt his knee start to bounce. He needed somewhere to put all this damned energy.

“Something will come up Stiles,” she said, leaning over to massage his shoulder. “We’ll find him. And hey, I didn’t get any death vibes from his apartment, remember? So… so that’s good, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Thanks Lydia.” He gave her an earnest nod. It was more than good. It was practically the only thing keeping him from highjacking a helicopter to shower the entire state of California with flyers of Derek’s face. God. This was the worst.

“So,” Lydia said, after a moment of silence, “what were you going to say to him exactly anyways? You know. The night you went over there.” Of course she would want to know that.

Stiles let out a pathetic laugh. “Man. I have no idea. I was kinda plastered.” Which was the absolute truth. He’d had zero game plan. It probably would have been a complete disaster.

“Well, what would you say to him if he showed up here right now?”

“Jeez. I don’t know. I’d hug the hell out of him. At the risk of loosing a limb. Because fuck it, right? Other than that, I guess I’d just tell him how glad I was that he’s okay. You know, with words and everything. And that would actually be a pretty monumental leap in our friendship.”

Lydia smiled. “You need to pace yourself, right?”

“Exactly.”

Their talk left Stiles feeling fractionally better, and with a renewed resolve to go home and brainstorm a different plan of attack to find Derek. He finished his coffee, he and Lydia said goodbye, and then he made his way down the hall past her don’t-touch-anything living room and into the entryway. As he bent over to tug on his running shoes, he felt his phone buzzing in the front pocket of his jeans. He checked the screen and seeing that the number was blocked, got a strange feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. With one shoe still waiting to be claimed, he answered it.

 _“Look, I don’t know who you are,”_ the voice on the other end said, _“but I was given this n-number by someone you might know, and he—he needs help.”_ It was a woman. A very nervous sounding woman. Was she— was she talking about Derek?

Stiles tried not to get his hopes up. He needed to stay calm, ask the right questions. “What’s his name?” for example.

_“They didn’t tell me. But he has black hair and a tattoo on his ba—”_

“Three spirals. Three spirals?”

 _“Yeah,”_ she said. Stiles sank to the floor. It was really him. 

“Wow. Okay. Um… where is he? Is he alright?”

_“He’s alive. But he’s… shit. This is going to sound completely whacko. Don’t hang up on me, alright?”_

Stiles didn’t even blink. “I won’t. Just tell me.”

Lydia appeared down the hall, her eyes wide with curiosity, her mouth curved into a small frown. “Stiles?” Whatever look he gave her in return, it conveyed the importance of the call, and she strode quickly to where he sat huddled against the front door. They stared at each other, barely daring to breathe.

 _“He’s being held by the Department of Homeland Security,”_ the woman said. 

Okay. That was unexpected. “Homeland Security? What, do they think he’s a terrorist?” And at that, Lydia sank down right across from him.

_“No. No. They… they think he’s a weapon. They’re doing… tests.”_

“Holy crap. So the government knows about werewolves?”

_“Yes. Listen, you have to get him out of here. The experiments… I don’t know how much more he can take.”_

“Experiments?” He felt his heart pound against his chest like a wrecking ball. This was so unbelievably wrong. How could the government just take someone like that, do… whatever they were doing to him? Was the world really this shitty? Stiles couldn’t help think of that scene in E.T. with the poor little guy turning grey while a bunch of scary dudes in hazmat suits poked and prodded at him. His babysitter had gotten in so much shit with his mom for showing him that movie. He’d had nightmares about it all week. 

But now it was real. It was Derek. Derek was the one turning grey. “What the hell are they doing to him?” he asked, watching Lydia’s face grow more concerned looking. 

_“Nothing that’s done any permanent damage—yet,”_ the woman said. _“But he’s not healthy either. I mean, he’s so weak. It might just be a matter of time before he can’t heal himself anymore.”_

“Whoa. Wait. You’re with them, aren’t you? The DHS? You get him out!”

_“I will, but like I said, he’s weak. And we’re in the middle of the woods. I can get him as far as the front gate, but he’s going to need someone to help him get away. Very far away.”_

Stiles swallowed the lump in his throat. Fuck. Once Derek was out, he still wouldn’t be safe. It still wouldn’t be over. Of course. Derek had managed a whopping two months of not having to worry constantly about his safety. Hope you enjoyed your vacation, buddy. Welcome back to your crappy excuse for a life. Well, crappy as it may be, at least he’d be alive. And that was Stiles’ priority at the moment. He had to focus on that. 

“Okay,” he said. “No problem. Just… just text me the coordinates. How far are you from Beacon Hills?”

_“Beacon Hills?”_

“Uh, California?”

_“We’re in Washington State.”_

“Come on. Really?”

It could have been worse. At least they were on the same coast. Still, when Lydia made the calculations, it turned out they were at least a 12 hour drive away. Since they needed the cover of darkness, and it was going to be physically impossible to get there before dawn, they arranged to meet at the fence behind the compound at 11pm the following night. Stiles was instructed to bring wire cutters. Of course he’d bring wire cutters. He’d bring a goddamn bazooka if she asked him to. Derek was alive. And Stiles felt like he should pinch himself.

“Tell him—tell him we’re coming. Scott and Stiles are coming,” he said, once their plan had been finalized. Lydia squeezed his hand in her own, and he squeezed back. “And tell him everything’s gonna be okay.” 

_“I will.”_

“Wait! You didn’t tell me your name.”

_“Uh—I’m Karen.”_

“Thank you Karen. Seriously. Thank you. He—he’s Derek. His name is Derek.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter, but Derek didn't have the stamina for anything longer, poor bb.

There weren’t any werewolves in Russia. When he was a kid, Derek had heard stories about how the Soviets captured entire packs and tried to brainwash them into becoming their soldiers and spies. And when they’d refused to cooperate, they’d been tossed into an incinerator under the Kremlin. The packs that remained had fled the USSR, and never returned. Of course, Peter had always insisted it was bullshit. No one seemed to have ever actually met a werewolf family with Russian ancestry. And the notion that any government had known that they existed this whole time reeked of crazy conspiracy theory. So Derek had remained sceptical.

Of course that was before he was abducted, shocked, imprisoned, scanned, gassed, injected, impaled, and starved by his very own government. Now, as he lay shackled to a cold metal slab in a bright white windowless room, with no sense left of how much time had passed or if it was day or night, he was ready to believe anything— Area 51, the second gunman on the grassy knoll, the faked moon landing, all of it. Not that he ever put much trust in the government—hell, he’d never even filed his taxes—but it was still a painfully bitter pill to swallow. Clearly the government didn’t seem to think werewolves deserved the same right to not be tortured that most other American citizens were afforded. So much for inalienable rights.

They wanted to see how much damage he could take. That much had become clear to him around the time they started slicing his skin open for what, at first, seemed like no reason. And they wanted to know how he changed into the wolf. Considering how they kept shoving that massive scanner around his head every time they managed to piss him off enough to shift, they still didn’t have a fucking clue. Still, Derek had the sick feeling that he wasn’t their first test subject. They seemed too prepared; the metal cuffs that held him to the table were incredibly strong, possibly titanium, and expanded and contracted every time he shifted, holding his more compact wolf body in place just as effectively as his human one. To some degree, this gang of mad scientist had known what they were in for.

It was Derek who wasn’t ready. He’d tried. He’d tried so fucking hard to stay strong and angry and passively resistant. And he’d kept it up for as long as he could. He hated them for making him feel so helpless, hated them for chipping away at everything he’d worked so hard to become.

After Mexico, it had been hard to explain to the others. They’d wanted to know how much stronger he was now that he could shift completely. More than anything though, it was inner strength that he’d found, and becoming the wolf was the physical side effect of that. He’d spent so much of his life feeling like a failure, like some kind of horror-flick Midas, turning everything he touched into blood and ashes. But with Scott and Stiles, with these earnest, stupid, wide-eyed teenagers who reminded him so much of himself sometimes it hurt, he’d found a way to fight that feeling, slowly but surely. And when he’d lost his abilities it had only become clearer—no matter what, he would never stop fighting. 

And apparently, the universe—or the United States Government, at any rate—had taken that as a challenge. A challenge he clearly wasn’t up to.

He hadn’t spoken a word to a single one of them. But they’d put him through the ringer so many times. He’d never had to heal himself so much in such a small space of time, and it was incredibly draining. It was a lot like how he’d felt after healing Cora and loosing his Alpha powers, only he didn’t have his sister here to run her fingers through his hair and nurse him back to health. And so the exhaustion and the weakness just lingered. Derek was starting to feel like he’d never be strong again.

So when one of the scientists had started unhooking some of the equipment, he couldn’t help but hope. It was all he had left. 

Maybe it was luck—though that was hard to believe considering his track record—but even though Derek had been wrong about it being over, as it turned out, that completely misguided hope was what ended up saving him. That and a woman in a lab coat named Karen with frizzy blonde hair and a crooked nose.

“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she told him. It was maybe a day after he’d scrawled Stiles’ phone number on her hand, and she was turned towards one of the flat screen monitors next to his bed, scribbling notes onto a tablet. With an older uniformed man watching through the wide window out into the hallway, they didn’t dare look at each other. “Your friends,” she added, “Scott and Stiles are coming. We’re going to get you out of here.” She turned to leave, and as she did so, gave his shoulder a quick squeeze. 

He had no idea how Scott and Stiles planned to get him out, but he didn’t have the energy to ask or even imagine. He was cold and hungry and so fucking tired, and all he could do was trust them. But after everything they’d been through, he did. Of course he did. And with the prospect of getting away from this place came a kind of calmness that washed over his body, and Derek drifted into a dreamless sleep.

 

-


	4. Chapter 4

“Man. Why does Derek always have to be taken to some secret location like a day’s drive away from civilization?”

“Wow Scott, it’s probably because he hates your butt so much. I’m sure that as we speak, he’s rubbing his hands together maniacally about how sore it’s gonna be by the time we get there.”

They’d just hit the I-97 and were making their way around Mount Shasta. So many damn pine trees. The jeep already smelled like Christmas. Stiles remembered that smell. When they were in 7th grade, his Dad had taken him on a camping trip to nearby Lake Siskiyou, and bits and pieces of that weekend came back to him as he drove; a town called Weed that they’d joked about for hours, an old cabin on the highway with a yard covered in chainsaw bear sculptures, the jagged white summit of the mountain off in the distance, dangerous and seemingly untouchable—basically a topographic metaphor for his relationship to girls at that point. But those memories felt like someone else’s life. They lived in a drastically different world now. They’d stepped through the Looking Glass and there was no going back, though Stiles often found himself aching to anyways.

Which was totally selfish. Because not knowing wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make anything better for anyone except himself. He’d helped people. He was helping people. Strangers—but also people who were pretty damn important to him. People like Scott and Lydia. And yeah, people like Derek, God help him. 

Even if Stiles could walk away from that, he didn’t want to.

He’d picked up Scott at the crack of dawn. They’d packed the jeep up with flare guns and water bottles, turkey sandwiches and sleeping bags, bolt cutters, a crow bar, and Stiles’ trusty Louisville Slugger. They’d grabbed some clean clothes from Derek’s loft. They’d swung by the vet clinic so Deaton could load them up with some werewolf-y first aid supplies. But Stiles still worried they were forgetting something vital. 

Maybe it was people. When they’d gone to Mexico, Malia, Kira and Lydia had come with them. But this time was different. Everyone had high-tailed it to Lydia’s place right after the phone call and they’d discussed who should go. In the end, it was decided that the plan didn’t call for manpower so much as it did stealth, and the fewer of them the stealthier, right? Logical decision. But one that the others had only agreed to slightly begrudgingly. And Malia? Well she was outright pissed. They’d broken up on pretty good terms, and they still cared about each other. Plus, she’d just started to think of Derek as family. She was worried—Stiles got that. Unfortunately, she was still working on expressing it more constructively than by growling and scratching open the entire length of an armchair. 

“I bet you’re glad Malia’s not here right now,” Scott said, like the dyslexic mind-reader he was.

“What?”

“I mean, dude, wouldn’t it be super awkward and uncomfortable?”

Oh, shit. Had Scott caught on somehow? Stiles’ nostrils flared as he silently chided himself for being so goddamn transparent. “Wh-wh-why would it be awkward?” he asked, oh-so smoothly, clinging for dear life to the steering wheel. 

“Seriously?” Scott said, waggling his eyebrows. “You guys broke up like five minutes ago.”

That made sense, actually. Stiles’ grip on the steering wheel loosened and he breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “Yeah, but it was totally diplomatic,” he said. “Malia was remarkably chill about the whole thing.” 

Scott gave Stiles a sideways glare. “Yeah, what ‘whole thing’ would that be again? ‘Cause I never really got a straight answer from you about why you guys broke up in the first place. Was it the little spoon thing?”

“What? No! Okay, maybe a little,” Stiles admitted. “But mostly it was just—I dunno—it felt too… too comfortable? Like we turned into an old married couple before we even hit the four monthiversary. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.” 

Stiles wasn’t lying. He was just omitting the part about how he’d also been starting to feel really confused every time he, Malia and Derek were in the same room together. Because it wasn’t Malia giving him butterflies in his stomach anymore. At any rate, Stiles’ answer seemed to satisfy Scott’s curiosity enough, and their conversation soon moved onto more practical matters, like where they’d stashed the extra batteries for the flashlights, and how long they could wait until their next pee break. 

They hit Oregon, and Crater Lake National park, at around 3 in the afternoon. It was a little past the half-way point, which somehow made everything seem more terrifying. Scott turned the music down, and became quiet for a while, starring out the window at the rolling swaths of young pine trees.

“It could have been me,” he said.

“It could have been a lot of people we know,” Stiles clarified, hugging a sharp turn overlooking a valley dotted with goats and big brown heifers.“And none of them would have deserved it.”

“It’s so wrong, Stiles. I just can’t… I can’t believe they just took him.” Scott was getting righteous, and Stiles didn’t blame him.

“I know.”

“What do you think they’re doing to him? Did that woman say what kind of experiments they—“

“Actually, Scott. I'd prefer not to think about it, okay?”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to worry about it happening to you too.”

Was Scott serious? Where the hell were his priorities? Stiles felt strongly compelled to smack some sense into him. “Well it’s not happening to you right now either, alright?” he snapped. “It’s happening to Derek. I mean, shit. They’ve had him there for ten days doing god-knows-what to him, while we’ve been at home twiddling our fucking thumbs. And all I can think about right now is getting him as far away from that place as humanly possible, because whatever they’ve put him through, it’s too fucking late to do anything about it, alright? It’s not the Scott McCall show every night. Fuck.”

“Okay! Okay! Jesus, Stiles,” Scott insisted, doing that thing where he pronounced his name in two distinct syllables just so he could really draw out how annoyed he was with him.

“Sorry. I’m just a little nervous here,” Stiles said, praying that would be explanation enough for an outburst on behalf of a guy he supposedly only tolerated like a rude, politically incorrect uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. 

Yeah. He may have been overcompensating a little lately.

Scott sighed. “Yeah, me too,” he said. And if Stiles hadn’t been driving he would have hugged him right then, because Scott’s uncanny ability to let things go so quickly never ceased to amaze. They shared a quick nod, eyes sharp, jaws tight, and purposes aligned. This was who they were now. This was what they did. It still scared the shit out of them sometimes, but at least they were in it together.

Stiles returned his focus to the road ahead, aiming for the dormant volcanoes to the north, and pondered what he’d like to do to the DHS guys who had Derek if one of those volcanoes happened to open up.

 

-


	5. Chapter 5

The man with the blond moustache and thin, oval face was named Fleming. Derek had heard his name more than any other, and concluded that he was the one in charge of the lab. He had only ever appeared on the occasions that marked the worst pain Derek had endured since being captured, and he stood at Derek’s feet at this moment, holding a grey translucent image of what looked like someone’s brain—Derek had a pretty good idea of whose. Like a pathetic lab rat, he felt his heart rate skyrocket at the sight of the spindly old man, and fought to get a grip on his panic.

“Secure its head,” Fleming said, tossing the transparency aside like junk mail. And suddenly Derek’s forehead and shoulders were being braced by hands covered in latex gloves and it had been so long since he ate or drank or had been able to move that when he tried to push back, it took only the slightest effort to restrain him. On either side of his head a shrill buzzing noise erupted, as if a swarm of wasps was surrounding him, and then he felt small grenades of pain explode at opposite corners of his forehead. He howled out in pain but didn’t shift, worried it might only make things worse. He felt tears stream out of the corner of his eyes. Stiles and Scott were going to be too late, and at best, all they’d have to bring home with them would be a corpse with holes drilled in its head like some kind of botched Frankenstein monster. God, it was painful, and even more so when Derek thought about how many more werewolves might be fated to die this way after him.

But the buzzing noise stopped, Derek’s frontal lobe still seemingly intact. Instead, his skull had been physically screwed to a metal bar that arched across his forehead and attached to the table. Pain radiated through his head instantly when he moved it even slightly. 

“Now,” Fleming said, “this should ensure we get a clearer picture, wouldn’t you say?”

One of the men standing behind Derek replied obediently, “Yes, sir,” and Derek heard the scanner roll across the room until its smooth white hull hovered over him like a UFO. He could still smell his own blood in the air.

“Dr. Fleming,” the same man spoke again, but this time it sounded like he’d bit his tongue. “I don’t think…” he mumbled, and a loud thud followed soon after. And then another.

Fleming staggered towards the noise, a hand clinging to the edge of the examination table, seeming totally perplexed. Something was happening, though Derek wasn’t sure what exactly. Fleming’s mouth opened to speak, but before he could get more than a dull croak out, his eyes fell shut and he flopped to the floor and out of sight.

So, either some toxic gas been released that was taking longer to affect him, or he’d get to just lie here and and die of dehydration while their corpses began to rot, the stench of decomposing flesh there to torture him further in his last dying breaths. For a few long minutes, Derek lay there, completely unable to move, desperate to know what the hell was happening, until finally he caught a glimpse through the window of a figure passing in the hall, and heard the doorknob click.

It was Karen. 

She moved quickly past him towards the fallen lab assistants, crouching down on the floor to check them and Fleming over. “It actually worked,” she muttered.

“You… did this?” Derek said cautiously, each word resulting in more pain from the wounds on his brow.

“It’s Marshfield’s birthday. I brought cupcakes.”

“How…”

“My own special blend of Ketamine and Rohyp—“ she started, but rising off the floor and finally getting a good look at him, she froze, speechless. Derek didn’t want to know how messed up he must have looked to put that expression on her face.

“Just… get it off.”

Karen blinked and shook herself out of the daze. “Okay,” she said, refocusing. “It looks—it looks like I can just detach the smaller bar from the one hooked to the table. Your friends will have to do the rest.”

“No,” Derek growled. Scott and Stiles couldn’t see this. God, he really didn’t want them to see this. Everything else had healed, all the evidence of every terrible thing they’d done to him was gone. But this… he didn’t want to add to their nightmares, which he was sure they had in spades already.

But Karen was already busy fiddling with the table clamps. “I’m sorry. We just don’t have time.” Derek felt her hand cradle the top of his head. The pressure on his forehead eased a little as the sound of metal clattering to the floor echoed through the cavernous room. He could move his head again.

“Is everyone… like them?” he asked, peering down for the first time at the three white-coated men collapsed on the white-tiled floor.

“Yes. But they’re gonna start waking up in about 15 minutes, so we have to hustle,” Karen said, deeply focused on releasing the clamps around his wrists and ankles. “Can you walk?”

Derek swallowed. He didn’t know if he had the strength to sit up, let alone walk, and wasn’t much looking forward to finding out. But he had to get the hell out of here somehow, and at this point he was willing to crawl across a bed of hot coals to do it.

As he pushed himself up, he felt his arms quake, and would have fallen back again if not for the fact that Karen had wrapped her arm around his shoulders. He might have been embarrassed by his weakness if he wasn’t so relieved to be free of his restraints, to be able to move at all, even if he did need some help doing it. He dangled his legs off the edge of the table. Being vertical for the first time in days was a bit of a shock to his system, and the world went black as the blood rushed from his head. He gripped Karen’s arm to keep him steady. When the room came back into focus, he moved to slide off the table, but Karen held him back.

“Hang on,” she said. She was starring at her hand where it was pressing against him and when Derek looked down he saw at least a dozen electrodes taped to his chest, their wires bundled together and leading to one of the computers a few feet away. He wanted to yank them off in one fell swoop, but his hands were shaking too hard to get a grip on the wires. Karen ripped them off one by one like bandaids, pulling out a few chest hairs in the process—but the pain barely registered compared to whatever the fuck else his body was going through at this point.

Fully untethered, Derek finally eased his bare feet onto the cold floor. There was still a thin sheet folded over his waist, and luckily, Karen thought to tie it around his hips. It sure as hell hadn’t occurred to him—a little nudity was the least of his worries right now. As she did this, Derek struggled to find some kind of balance, fought against the trembling of his knees and the raw ache that crashed through his leg muscles like a tidal wave, threatening to knock him down like a rickety old beach shack. Karen didn’t look nearly strong enough to carry him. He had to be able to do this.

He only realized he was still clinging to the edge of the table when she had to pry off one of his hands in order to pull his arm around her neck. “Come on,” she said, and led him out into the long corridor, each step a test of his endurance.

The narrow grey hallway seemed to go on forever and Derek struggled not to stumble or rely to much on her for support. He could hear her heart racing from the physical effort of carrying half his weight already. And he could hear her swearing in his ear pretty clearly, too. They dodged a few unconscious guards and scientists and eventually reached an elevator, and Karen quickly smashed down on the button by the doors.

“We get up to the ground floor and the back exit’s right there, but we’ll need to head through the woods up to the fence,” she explained. “That’s where your friends are meeting us.”

Derek nodded, trying to focus. His body felt heavy—his limbs like sandbags pulling him down towards the ground. In the elevator, his throbbing head caused his vision to blur—if he was still vertical, it was only by virtue of pure adrenaline. But he took it—prayed he had enough to fuel the sprint as they staggered out of the compound and into the dark wilderness. 

Verdant oxygen filled his lungs. Crickets chirped, and mountain hemlocks creaked in the breeze. He caught the scent of mushrooms and red cedars. And freedom.


	6. Chapter 6

The directions had led them to an unpaved, unlit road south of Mount Rainier. A couple of concrete slabs marked its dead-end, and Stiles and Scott grabbed their equipment and moved forward on foot. It was a cloudy, starless night, cold enough that Stiles felt a chill through his thick wool sweater. Spring was slower to start up here, especially in the mountains. The ground felt hard and frozen in places, and the ferns—that normally would have made it tricky to cut through the undergrowth without a trail—were still small, curled up like bright green snail shells. They tried to move quietly, but the woods themselves were so silent that every rustle of leaves, every snap of a twig, seemed like Fourth of July fireworks. It was starting to give Stiles heart palpitations.

He really had to work on staying calm. He’d recently gotten pretty adept at keeping his cool under pressure, as one tended to when one’s life became one life-threatening situation after another. If he’d been going on this rescue mission with Scott two years ago, it would have made perfect sense for him to be freaking out non-stop. But Stiles wasn’t that guy anymore. He didn’t have that excuse. And since he couldn’t tell Scott what the real reason was, he’d been coming up with a stream of half-truths the whole way here. And the charade felt pretty fucking weak, to be honest. He was starting to suspect Scott was just pretending to believe him out of pity. But hey, Stiles could accept that. Embrace it even. As long as it meant not talking about how he possibly-maybe-might have some very slight romantic type feelings for Derek. Barely formed feelings, really. Larval feelings.

 

After five minutes or so, Scott stopped a few yards ahead of him, turned back and shone his flashlight in Stiles’ face. Stiles squinted, momentarily blind, and then saw that Scott was waving him over.

The fence.

It was at least 15 feet high, chain link topped with barbed wire like the ones you see around prisons, but instead of being lit up with flood lights, it was shrouded in darkness and camouflaged by the tangled vines and tree branches that had grown up around it. If Scott hadn’t spotted it first, Stiles probably would have walked right into it. Whatever this place was, it had been here a long while.

Stiles wrapped his fingers around one of the older vines crawling up the fence. “What the hell is this? The Swan?” Scott stared at him blankly and Stiles sighed. Why did he even bother? “Lost, Dude. I know you’ve seen Lost because we marathoned it together.”

“Okay, okay,” Scott conceded, wrestling a massive set of wire cutters out of his duffle bag, “you wanna give me a hand here?” and promptly handed them over to Stiles.

“And what are you gonna do?” was the stupid question Stiles asked just before Scott wolfed out on the fence, clearing it of vegetation with his sharp claws in a matter of seconds.

“You can’t just do that to the fence too?”

“I figured you’d wanna feel useful.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you,” Stiles said, snapping through the first link, channeling his hostility into the inanimate object.

It was a quarter to eleven by the time they had the opening ready, high enough to duck through and about four feet wide. They waited crouched on either side like cats outside a mouse hole, squinting into the dense evergreens beyond the fence for any signs of movement — Scott having much better luck seeing anything with his werewolf night-vision. Stiles, on the other hand, might as well have been gazing into the drain in his bathtub.

Scott checked the time on his phone, his face illuminated by the screen. “You’re sure this is the spot, right?” he said.

“Yes, Scott. She gave me the latitude and longitude. Is it even eleven o’clock yet?”

“Two minutes to.”

“Okay, then. Relax,” Stiles told him, even though his own internal organs were twisted in a knot. What if they didn’t show up? What were they supposed to do then? Storm a freakin’ government compound with a crow bar, wire cutters and a couple of Maglites? Yeah, that would be seriously ill-advised. Too bad he didn’t even have to think about it; he was physically incapable of leaving Derek behind. Even if it meant doing something borderline suicidal. Stiles truly was a lost cause.

“I hear something,” Scott whispered. “Do we—“

“Wait for the signal.”

Scott nodded. Stiles clutched the edge of the fence where they’d bent back the jagged ends—held his flashlight to his chest with his other hand. He blinked into the darkness, silently begging for it to be who they were waiting for and not some pissed-off army dudes with semi-automatic weapons.

And then he heard something too. Leaves rustling. Twigs snapping. 

“Stiles. I think I can smell him.”

Stiles would believe it when he saw it. He kept his eyes glued to the dark blur of trees.

Then a beam of light appeared, aimed right towards them— it flickered on/off/on/off/on/off.

Stiles laughed. 

“Was that it?” Scott asked.

Shit. Right. “Yes! Yeah!” he said, fumbling with his flashlight, until he managed to return the signal like they’d agreed to.

He heard an owl hoot somewhere above them in the trees. It startled him before the appearance of Derek and the woman half-dragging him towards them could.

She had specifically instructed them not to cross the fence. Stiles and Scott both had to restrain themselves from bolting right through to them as they watched her and Derek struggle to move forward. 

Derek looked wrecked—barely conscious. He had a white sheet tied around his waist, and that was it. It looked like he was barefoot. And something on his forehead glinted in the light from Scott’s flashlight. Something metallic. God, was it some kind of robotic implant? What the hell had they done to him?

Before Stiles could get his horrified imagination in check, the woman and Derek reached the opening. 

“I don’t have much time,” she said, winded, guiding Derek through. Ducking under the fence, Derek stumbled, his hand shooting out to find purchase. On instinct, Stiles grabbed onto him, sliding his arm under Derek’s and around his waist. Scott did the same. 

They wrangled his bare arms over their necks. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay,” Scott said.

“Yeah. We’ve got you buddy,” Stiles whispered, reassuring himself just as much. With Derek’s body pressed up against him, trembling and weak though it was, Stiles finally felt some small relief. 

“Stiles?” Derek croaked, like maybe he was surprised to see him. 

“Hi, big guy.” Christ. Any second now, Stiles’ heart was going to shatter like a windshield in a head-on collision. He really needed to stop staring at Derek’s face, his searching eyes, his trembling lower lip. The stainless steel bar across his forehead; Stiles’ stomach sank when he realized they’d screwed it into his skull. The fact that Derek was even conscious was a goddamn marvel. 

“What did they do to him,” he asked, hugging Derek closer and glaring up at Karen who was backed against the fence with her hands on her knees.

“It’s a restraint,” she said, clearly avoiding looking at it. She straightened and shook her head. “There wasn’t time… I’m sorry. You’ll have to take care of it.” She looked a little older than Stiles had imagined, or maybe just more weathered. She wore a slightly oversized white lab coat and unfashionable wire-rimmed glasses. Her kinky blonde hair reminded Stiles of Erica before she was turned. She held her flashlight in both hands and fiddled with the focus absentmindedly. “I don’t think they go very deep.”

Stiles and Scott both looked at the blood-stained entry points with trepidation. “You know, I don’t think he’d be alive if they did,” Stiles replied, and Derek winced, bowing his head as if he wished he could hide the horrible thing somehow.

By then it must have been clear that Stiles and Scott had steadied him, that they wouldn’t let him fall, because Stiles felt the entirety of Derek’s body weight suddenly entrusted to them. 

Scott didn’t take that as a good sign. “Derek?”

“Sorry,” Derek rasped, then squinted at Karen. “Thank you.” 

She shook her head, but finally looked up at him. “I don’t deserve your thanks. I don’t even know if I deserve your forgiveness.”

“You’ve got… both,” Derek said, and then his head fell forward and his eyes shut, possibly from falling asleep, possibly from passing out. Either way, he was in desperate need of somewhere to lie down. Preferably with blankets—the guy was an icicle.

“Dude, we need to get him back to the jeep,” Stiles pleaded, clinging to Derek’s forearm where it hung in front of Stiles’ heart.

Scott nodded in agreement, but Stiles looked to Karen one last time, “What about you?”

“I can take care of myself. Get him out of Washington,” she said. “They’ll look for him. I’m not sure for how long.”

“Are there gonna be cops after us?”

Karen shook her head. “They won’t involve outsiders. This isn’t exactly on the up-and-up, as you may have noticed. They have their own men. Military. The same ones that took him. I’m sure they’re quite effective.”

“We can’t bring him home, can we?” Stiles said, glad that Derek wasn’t awake to hear the answer. After everything, Derek damn well deserved to sleep in his own bed. And there was probably nothing he wanted more. It kinda killed Stiles that they wouldn’t be able to give that to him.

“No way,” Karen confirmed. “That’s the first place they’ll look. And they’ll probably keep an eye on it. Go east. Hell, go to Canada. I’ll try to contact you again once I know how they’re handling things.”

Stiles nodded. “You have my number,” he said, and Karen nodded back. 

“Good luck,” she said, and ducked back under the fence, disappearing from whence she came.

The trek back to the car would have felt a hell of a lot shorter if Derek hadn’t been unconscious and barefoot and shaking like a leaf. A really heavy leaf. Scott had offered to take Derek on his own, hoist him over his shoulder somehow—which would have been awkward but still something Scott’s supernatural strength could easily handle. Stiles had flat-out refused, however. Because for some stupid reason, this was important, helping carry Derek away from this place. Symbolic or something. So he powered through, despite the cramps in his arms as he held onto Derek and the burning sensation in his lungs as he struggled to keep pace with Scott because you don’t fucking ask anyone to slow down when you’re running away from a government compound where your friend was being tortured. Instead, you remind yourself that this is nothing compared to what that friend has just endured. And you keep going.

When they reached the jeep, they eased Derek gently into the back seat, and Stiles covered him with the same wool blanket they’d wrapped around him when they’d brought him back from Mexico, an old army blanket that had belonged to a grandfather Stiles had never met. 

“Where are we gonna go?” Stiles said, still leaning over Derek where he lay curled on his side. His fingers twisted nervously at a loose thread on the edge of the blanket near Derek’s head. He couldn’t think. He needed to think, but all he could do was stare at this unconscious, shivering, lump and try to restrain himself from bundling it in his arms and never letting go.

“Lets just drive,” Scott said, taking shotgun. “East. Lets just go east. We can figure out something more exact on the way.”

That… that made sense. “Yeah.”

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?”

“Come on!”

“Right,” Stiles said, and got into the driver’s seat, silently cursing the fact that his arm wasn’t long enough to stretch behind him and rest his hand somewhere on Derek’s body, just so he could feel the constant reassurance that they had him back. Just so Derek could feel that too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr, btw. I'm [scruffwolf](http://scruffwolf.tumblr.com/). Follow me!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: (non-graphic) body horror

  
Derek’s father had talked in his sleep. Talia used to tease him over breakfast about the ridiculous things she’d hear him say in the wake of harmless but clearly bizarre dreams. A few of them had been pretty hard to live down ( _Don't milk my cows!_ for example). But she’d never talked about the things he’d say—or yell—during nightmares. No one did, even though sometimes the whole house could hear. 

Maybe it was hereditary, because Derek had talked in his sleep sometimes too, waking himself up with the sound of his own voice. Luckily there was no one sleeping next to him to hear the stupid things he said. Although there had been a handful of times where a nightmare had caused him to call out and either Laura or one of his parents would hear and come check on him. But it had never been that big a deal. And then Paige—

He’d talked in his sleep almost every night after that, rousing the entire house with his screams. And there was this other thing—Peter said it was called sleep paralysis. All Derek knew was that he’d wake up unable to move and barely able to breathe, feeling a crushing weight on his chest as if someone were sitting on him to hold him down. Sometimes he’d hear voices, glimpse shadowy figures moving around his bed. Unable to move, the fear would completely overtake his body, making him scared of even his own mother until he realized with relief that he could move again and managed to slow his racing heart.

It happened for a few months after everything with Paige, and then it subsided. But after the fire, had returned with a vengeance, and scared Laura as much, if not more than Derek. It came, of course, with nightmares he remembered clear as day. They were hard to shake. He didn’t sleep much that first year after they left Beacon Hills, and Laura had tried to convince him to go see some kind of specialist, but what were they going to do? It waasn’t like medication worked on werewolves. That was the excuse he gave Laura, anyways. Because he wasn’t about to tell her how it was his fault their family was dead and that suffering through some dumb nightmares wasn’t even close to the punishment he deserved.

Eventually, the sleep paralysis episodes faded again, though the nightmares never did.

 

—

He felt completely depleted. Like he’d been running on fumes for miles. And he knew. That feeling of being held down, unable to move while strange figures loomed over him and… and hurt him, they weren’t dreams anymore.

They were memories.

Derek became increasingly aware of the sharp pain in his forehead, of the raw ache that afflicted every muscle in his body. He’d escaped. He could’t remember how exactly, but the familiar scent of Stiles and Scott, of stale french fries and gasoline and Axe body spray, reassured him. As did the sound of both their hearts, Scott’s slow and steady as he slept, Stiles’ beating only slightly faster than resting speed. Derek felt grounded. Safe.

“Stiles?” he said, his voice so hoarse it was practically inaudible.

Stiles must have heard something because he tilted his rear-view mirror down at him and said, “Derek? You awake?” All Derek could see in the mirror were Stiles’ eyes, wide and searching and worried. 

“My head…”

“I know, buddy. We just crossed the state line. I’m pulling into the next motel we see, and then we’ll get that thing off of you.”

“What…” Derek’s hand ventured towards where the sharp aches on either side of his forehead were originating—and abruptly encountered cold stainless steel. “Oh, fuck.” Touching it caused the pain to worsen tenfold, and Derek felt his stomach twist in shock.

“Derek?”

“Pull over,” he groaned, his body vibrating with pain. 

He felt the Jeep slow down. He heard Scott, apparently awake now, say, “Dude, I think he’s gonna be sick.” And when the Jeep came to a halt on the side of the road, and Derek reached over his head to open the door, he heard both of them urging him to wait as they scrambled to get out.

Werewolves didn’t get sick. Not like humans. They didn’t catch colds or get food poisoning or strep throat. Derek had never even had the chicken pox. And since they couldn’t get drunk, they never had hangovers. They couldn’t even overdose on drugs—something Derek learned first-hand not long after the fire. They had incredible immune systems and healing abilities, but they were still biological creatures with basic needs. They weren’t machines. They didn’t have endless supplies of energy. They needed time to recharge, just like anyone. Otherwise, things eventually went to shit.

Even if you’d evolved, apparently.

Which was why Stiles and Scott had to hold Derek up as he stumbled out of the Jeep into the dark, why they had to help lower him to his knees in the cold grass, and why he retched and retched as his insides twisted in misery, and spat only a small amount of spit out onto the ground, because there was nothing in him to reject.

Scott and Stiles were goddamn angels. Kneeling there in the damp weeds with him, holding him steady, rubbing his back, dragging the blanket back around his shoulders as he shivered through another round of dry heaving. Not to mention the danger they’d put themselves in to get him out of there in the first place. He was going to be indebted to them for life after this— if he wasn’t already. For Mexico. For Jennifer. For all the other times they’d pulled his ass out of hot water. Or chlorinated pools.

“You’re okay, man,” Scott said, squeezing his shoulder while Derek tried unsuccessfully to hold back a pathetic whimpering noise. He felt Scott’s grip tighten, felt him take away some of the pain. But the relief was quickly replaced with guilt when Scott’s grip suddenly loosened and he staggered backwards.

“I’m okay,” Scott said, quickly recovering.

Stiles hissed. “Yeah, well he’s not. We have to get that fucking thing off his head. Like… yesterday.”

Scott took a deep breath and shook his head.“What do you suggest, dude? We do it right here in the back of the Jeep?”

Stiles didn’t answer.

Fuck. What did it matter where they did it? Derek just wanted it over with. “Do it,” he grunted.

“You heard the man,” Stiles said, hefting Derek’s arm over his neck.

They guided him back to the Jeep. Stiles left Scott to prop him up against the back door and started dumping the contents of the boot onto the gravel shoulder of the road.

“Wait, what if someone drives by and sees us?” Scott asked.

“We’re in Nowheresville Idaho,” Stiles answered. “We haven’t passed another car in almost an hour. And even if someone does drive by, the chances they have the balls to stop an ask us what we’re doing are slim to none.”

Scott sighed. “Fine. Fine, let’s just do it then.”

With the back seat down, there was space enough for a pallet, and as Scott helped Derek climb in, Stiles scrambled to finish throwing it together.

“Okay,” Stiles huffed, placing a pillow at the top, his scent coming off of it in waves. He gave Derek a weak smile, slapping the pillow in invitation, and Derek eased himself back, his arms trembling. As he did so, Stiles squeezed past him.“Just… hang on,” he said, and hopped back outside. 

Scott took his place, crouching next to him, and the way he held his hand over Derek’s chest, Derek could tell he was about to take some of his pain again. Dumb kid didn’t know when to stop. 

“That’s enough, Scott. I… I can handle it.”

“Derek…”

“Don’t,” he said, closing his eyes. He clung to the edges of the musty sleeping bag beneath him. He focused on his breathing, and waited for the kick-off. And he didn’t question why that smell of the pillow under his head was so damn comforting.

“Stiles…” Scott whispered. “Deaton’s med kit.”

“Yeah. I know,” Stiles said.

They weren’t stupid. And neither was Derek. The shape he was in, there was a good chance he wasn’t going to be healing as quickly as he normally did. And there wasn’t anything Scott could do about that.

Derek felt the Jeep’s chasis rock as Stiles jumped back inside. “You ready?” Scott asked.

He clenched his teeth, which really didn’t help the pain any. “Doubt I’ll ever be ready to have two metal screws r-ripped out of my sk-skull, Scott,” he stuttered bitterly, peering up at the both of them.

“Hey,” Stiles said, smiling softly. “There’s the Derek Hale we all know and love.” And if Derek’s snarky comments were making Stiles smile instead of roll his eyes—well—Derek had to be in pretty terrible shape.

Everything happened blessedly fast after that; Scott holding him down, Stiles taking the screwdriver to the first screw, tight lipped and determined. They clearly expected him to struggle, for his fangs to come out. But he didn’t and they didn’t. He was resigned to what was happening here, knew it was necessary. And besides, he was too damn tired to shift anyways.

That he didn’t put up a fight wasn’t to say that he didn’t succumb to the pain. Because it hurt like son-of-a-bitch, and he howled so loud that Scott had to stuff the corner of Stiles’ pillow in his mouth. And Stiles didn’t shut up, of course, spewing a constant stream of apologies as he focused sombrely on the task at hand.

Derek kept trying to remind himself that the pain was temporary, that when this was over with, he’d feel better than he did before. That this was just a moment in time, fleeting, immaterial. And he could choose not to dwell in it. He could choose not to exist in this moment. He could be air. 

He was air. 

God, it really fucking hurt to be air.

Finally, Derek felt Scott’s hands on his shoulders loosen, felt the pressure on his forehead abate. “You’re okay,” Stiles breathed, over and over, like it was one word, “Youreokay. Youreokay. Youreokay,” until it wasn’t about the meaning anymore, just the rhythmic pulse of Stiles’ voice on every exhale. 

It was over.

The wounds weren’t healing. Derek could feel the steady stream of blood sliding down either side of his head, but Stiles was prepared, quickly held something soft to the wounds, his hands exerting a gentle but firm pressure. He hovered over Derek in the tiny space, his expression incomprehensibly worried, tears staining his cheeks. 

He shouldn’t have had to do that. Stiles had always been a little squeamish, and this would probably give him nightmares for weeks. “Sorry,” Derek said, but it only caused Stiles to laugh nervously. 

“Hey, that’s my line, buddy,” he said, reaching into the first aid kit, his hands swapped for Scott’s on Derek’s forehead. 

“Feel any better?” Scott asked hopefully. Like a needy younger brother, he didn’t leave much room for disappointment.

“Yeah,” Derek said, and Scott’s expression relaxed, just as he expected it to. 

Scott nodded. “Good. That’s—“

“Car,” Stiles blurted out. He was gawking out the front window, mouth agape. Derek could hear his heart rate increasing. 

Scott just looked at him like he was loosing it. “What?”

“There. Is. A. Car. Coming,” Stiles grunted, unmoving. “And it’s clearly our lucky day, ‘cause it looks like it’s slowing down,” he added. And suddenly Scott’s heartbeat was playing catch-up.

Every instinct Derek had was screaming _fight or flight_ , but it was no damn use. He struggled to sit up, but Scott held him down without much effort at all. Not that it mattered. Even if he could manage to climb out of the back of the Jeep and stand on his own two feet, he’d be useless in a fight, and if they needed to run, he’d only slow them down. Frustration wasn’t strong enough a word. Derek was angry. Angry at his body for not being strong enough to follow his instincts. He felt trapped.

Maybe he wasn’t held captive anymore. But he might as well have been.


End file.
